He said something to a native in a ragged blue uniform, who looked like a sweeper or a porter of the building.
“Yes, it is so,” he said. “You shall rest awhile to consider the angel on the tower and other matters. You shall have your hands free, so that you can catch your lice. You will find some brother Inglays where you are going.”
Hi realised that he was going to be jailed.
“Sir,” Hi said, “will you please let me go? I am not a subject of this State.”
“Sir, we will please let him go,” the officer said. “He is not a subject of this State.”
The man in the blue rags led the way into the house. The officer ordered the Indians to take Hi in after him. Hi was thrust along a hall into a corridor, then across a yard, paved with concrete, to a low building or shed, where the ragged man unlocked a door. When the door was opened, Hi was flung through it. He went staggering for a couple of steps, stumbled over a body which grunted, staggered on and trod upon a second body, which roused up, cursed in English and subsided.
The door clicked to and the lock turned. The key was withdrawn and the footsteps of the jailer passed away across the yard. A door closed behind them. It seemed to Hi to shut him into an “everlasting prison, remediless.” He apologised to the two bodies, on which he had trodden, but had no answer, except drunken muttering.
“I am jailed,” he thought, “locked up in a jail and can’t get out. And I can’t tell when I shall get out. I may be here for days.”
After a little time the room seemed less dark. He began to have glimmerings of its shape. There was a grated opening high up which let in air. A little grating in the door let him peer into the yard. It was a biggish, long prison room about twenty-four feet by eight. There were three people in it, a dead drunk man, a less drunk man and himself. The dead drunk man was out of all knowledge of the world. The second, from words uttered when trodden on, Hi judged to be a deserter from the Navy.
Peering through the grating, he could see little beyond except the four concreted sides of the yard sloping to a central drain. An evergreen stood in a tub at each corner of the yard. The slopes of the pent-houses surrounding the yard kept him from sight of the heavens, but a glimmer in the water of the drain showed that the stars were shining. He shook at the door, which rattled a little. It was an iron slab. He was a prisoner. “And Carlotta is a prisoner,” he thought. “And how on earth is Don Manuel to be warned?” He saw no way. “They’ve diddled us between them,” he thought.